Why an "original" bicycle makes me sad

On the Classic Rendezvous list, where I have been a member for a decade or more, there has been much discussion of the Concours d’Elegance at the California L’Eroica and ride. I have been fascinated by the discussion, because I have been a rider of high-end bicycles and a bicycle business employee on and off since 1973.

“Originality” has become the holy grail of collectors. I will agree that it is very cool to find a forty-year-old bicycle in totally original condition. Cleaning it up and showing it would gather oohs and aahs from the most jaded of collectors. I will admit having mightily lusted after a 1971 Peugeot PX-10 that had been for sale at a very reasonable price a couple of years ago, right in my neighborhood.

But I have been thinking long and hard about “originality” and what it really means. Looking at the PX-10 in question, it seemed that the bike had been ridden a few times and then hung in the garage, gathering dust for a few decades, then getting donated to a charity bike shop. How sad. Bicycles are meant to be ridden.

A high-end bicycle bought in the 1940s or 1950s was not meant to be a static piece of art. The buyer clearly made some financial sacrifice to own a good tool. That tool was used. And as it was used, parts on it wore out. Riders would rarely replace the parts with the originals, especially in those years when everything bicycle-related was rapidly improving. Would you really replace a Cyclo-Benelux coil-spring derailleur if you could afford one of the newer Simplex or Campagnolo parallelogram units? Would you continue to ride with wimpy brakes as the technology improved? Of course not.

When I started working in bike shops, during the first 10-speed boom, “original equipment” often varied wildly as parts shortages were a regular occurrence.  And the economical race bikes of the day, the bikes that appeared alongside the more mundane entry-level 10-speeds of the day, seldom left the shop in “original” condition, and sometimes, were heavily modified even before they were ridden. One of my colleagues bought a PX-10 new, stripped off all of the parts, sent the frame out to be repainted with modern paint and clear-coat over the decals, then rebuilt it with a mix of top-of-the-line French and Italian parts. The only original equipment he kept was the Stronglight 93 crankset and V4 headset, which are already very nice components. Now fast forward to 2015, and here’s what the judges would say: Super LJ derailleurs with Retrofriction levers – not original, points off; Mafac Competition brakes with drilled levers and full gum hoods – not original, points off; Campagnolo Record hubs with Mavic Module E rims, shod with much later Continental Grand Prix 4000 tires – yep, you guessed it, not original, points off. So in the judges’ eyes, this bike that will keep its looks longer, with a modern two-part clearcoat over the decals and will work better because all of the parts were upgraded, is a less valuable bike than the original, with plastic Simplex derailleurs, Normandy Luxe Competition hubs, with their unique and unavailable bearing cones and integral dust covers that cannot be removed for easy cleaning, and Mafac Racers with the silly half hoods on the brake levers?

To my eyes, as a bicycle rider, not a bicycle collector, a 1940s top-end frame, with parts representing the best available from every decade since, repainted when needed, and still loved and ridden by the grandson of the original owner is far more interesting than the wall queen that was ridden 100 miles when it was new, discovered by a collector and then polished and hung on the wall as a sculpture.

And it makes me a little sad to think that the unridden bikes are the ones that people want to look at.

Tension can be a good thing

One of my friends swears that wheels I built for him roll faster than other wheels. He says he has even tested it with similar tires at the same pressure, trading wheels with another rider. He has said it enough times to enough people that I believe him. His tests are on long, steep hills with no pedaling but no brakes either, just coasting. And no matter whose bike has the Earle Wheel on the front, that’s the one that rolls away from the rest.

I build my wheels for maximum reliability and durability, but I had not really thought about making them roll faster. But as I mulled over the findings, I realized that the same things I do to make a strong, long-lasting wheel also make the wheel roll faster. Spoke tension. Specifically, very even spoke tension makes the wheel roll a little bit easier.

A trained engineer who studies wheels could certainly say it better than I can, and will have numbers to back up the words, but for the average rider, that would be overkill.

The thing to remember is that when it is rolling, a wheel is not really a static structure. As the wheel rolls, each spoke loses a little bit of its tension, then regains it. When a spoke that is significantly looser or tighter than its neighbors, the oscillation of tension is enough different that slows the bike down ever so slightly, the way a small bump in the road would.

We all know that smoother roads are faster. Well, my story (and I am sticking to it) is that wheels with very even tension will roll more smoothly and faster, the same way a bike goes faster on smooth road.

The continuing conversation with Maynard Hershon

Maynard: So many things you just said resonate with me. We never imagined that rides would start and end in parking lots. Why would we have wanted to arrive at the ride start in a car? What, so we could get home 10 minutes after the ride ended? 

Drive and leave immediately and never have a chance to hang out with your friends? I have to think that our friends were more important to us then. Our cycling friends were our best friends.

I worked for three bike shops on the sales floor and behind parts counters. I worked for my friend Tom Petrie, who represents several cool Euro parts suppliers, in his office in El Cerrito, California. 

I worked for Mavic, Shimano and SRAM at dozens of national and international level bike races. I wrote columns for Winning Magazine, VeloNews, the Bicycle Paper and the Rivendell Reader.

I wrote catalogs for Serotta Racing Cycles, Fuji Cycles, LeMond Racing Cycles and now Formigli USA.

I never HAD a resume. What we had were friends. You could say our circle of friends was almost like family. Someone you knew also knew someone in almost any cycling hotbed in the US. 

We didn't need no stinkin' resumes.

Earle: No stinkin' resumes? With first names as uncommon as Maynard and Earle, we seldom needed last names. Earle is a little more common than Maynard, so I sometimes would get, "Oh, you're THAT Earle." 

Maynard: It's funny when you say it that way, Oh! You're THAT Earle, but it's true! I wonder if we knew how perishable out little world was, Earle... Sigh....

Earle: In a way, that world still exists. That close circle of friends is still out there. It's just that for most of us, cycling is no longer the center of our lives. We get together just a few times a year. Or we keep in touch via the Internet. 

When I went to San Francisco State to finish my degree, I had to find work more lucrative than a bicycle shop job, at least for part-time hours. I also widened my circle to include a lot of people who had never been serious cyclists. 

In those days, at the dawn of the personal computer era, it was easy to lose track of people. I had to go out of my way to stay in touch with even a few people.

Meeting again was sometimes a happy accident. In Boise, Idaho, I'd been away from the bike business for most of a decade when I went to the start of the HP Women's Challenge. Wandering around as a fat man with no credentials, it still took me just a little time to connect with old friends. 

You were there doing motorcycle duty. Brian Greiger, now living just a few miles down the road from me, was a hired gun for a European team that could not afford to bring a mechanic. Mike Neel was managing the Saeco-Timex Women's team. Our conversations picked up right where they had left off years before.

The same thing happened last summer when I went to High Point, North Carolina, for the National Criterium Championship. I walked into a nearly empty hotel bar and started talking to one of the two other patrons. He was Bill Humphreys, who I had not spoken with in something like 35 years. Within minutes, we were laughing and exchanging John Allis stories.

The Internet has made it easier to maintain at least some contact. You and I have not been face to face in more than a decade, but here we are, talking as if we had a steady stream of beer pitchers and all the time in the world.

More conversation with Maynard

Maynard: I lived in Marin County from '75 until '84, so I watched the mountain bike revolution happen. And I sure knew Charlie Kelly, as did anyone who rode a bike in Marin in those days.

Thinking about Charlie makes me think about Phil Brown, another cyclist, rock 'n' roll roadie and later a sound engineer. He and Doug White, who makes some wonderful bike parts today, built road frames called Brown and White. 

Phil was just here in Denver with his old friend Paul Stubblebine, another cyclist and sound engineer. Paul and Phil tell great stories of working with music business folks back when. 

You ask, "Who was the smartest personal manager, Phil?" Or, "Paul, who was the greatest waste of talent?" The stories just roll out of those guys.

Guys like these, Charlie and Phil and Paul, would be great guys to know even if we hadn't met them through cycling. But cycling introduced us to SO many super people, men and women....

I'm afraid that the social aspects of cycling, the opportunities to get to know people, are not so frequent today. People drive to the rides and take their bikes out of their cars.

They look at their phones when the rides break. They're so connected that they have to get somewhere right after the ride ends. No hanging out for coffee. No getting to know their own Charlies, Phils and Pauls.

Earle: Especially in the early season, rides could be at a "conversational" pace, meaning nobody was working so hard you could not talk to the person next to you. 

Rides also ended at a destination, not a parking lot. In Berkeley, rides began or ended at Peet's Coffee, either the Northside location or Domingo Avenue, at the start of the Tunnel Road climb. The conversations continued there, sometimes for hours.

A day off work was a day to hang around with your bike friends. A ride might last a few hours, but nobody was in a hurry to part company.

Some of this can be attributed to the small world we lived in. Before Greg and Lance, before the Ironman, the world of high-end bikes was small. Small enough for no more than one or two degrees of separation from virtually everybody who mattered.

A personal example: When the economy dipped in 1981 and the Bicycle Exchange might have to lay somebody off, I was also ready to leave Cambridge. Rich Olken, the owner of the BiEx, and Mike Zane, one of the founders of Kryptonite Locks, each told me that I would probably get along with Peter Rich of Velo Sport in Berkeley. 

So I called the store, talked to the manager, who was from the planet known as Southern California, and he said, "Yeah, we need somebody, can you send a resume?"

I said I would, but also suggested that the manager check with other friends in the business. I got a call the next day. Somebody from Velo Sport had made a few calls and I had passed muster. More important than a resume was the recommendation of friends in the business.

The bike world is a lot bigger than that now. The small world we lived in hangs on in small pockets, but we get together for rides only a couple of times a year instead of a couple of times a week.

Continuing the conversation

Picking up where the conversation ended on my last post:

Maynard: As Earle suggests, there's not all that much to say about bicycles. I know that the online and paper bicycle publications fill their pages with content about stuff issue after issue.

But -- it's just stuff. Stuff won't guarantee a great ride. It won't climb the hill for you or set a new PB on your usual loop. 

Actual skill, fitness or genius isn't for sale. REI doesn't offer them. You have to have them or earn them.

What can be sold is stuff. Selling it means convincing you that using that stuff is the equivalent of possessing skill, class or genius, qualities that can't be sold.

Earle: There have been a few publications that were not ‘stuff’ driven. The best of these was Fat Tire Flyer, the first ever mountain bike magazine, edited by the incomparable Charlie Kelly. Here is everything you need to know about ‘stuff’ and complete bicycles, for that matter: http://www.sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/bike_review.htm

SeeKay was there when mountain biking took off, and one of the inaugural inductees into the Mountain Biking Hall of fame. But he never got so caught up in himself that he forgot that it was just stuff, and the ride was the most important thing.  He was also a first-class rock ‘n’ roll roadie and a decent guitar player with an eclectic repertoire.  I met SeeKay through bicycles, but we had much more to talk about.

Charlie is just one example of the great people I have met through bicycles.

Finally, some new content

I have been away from this blog for far too long. I'm sure anybody who tried to follow it has given up hope. Well, please come back. I have new content and will update the blog far more regularly.

On my regular Website, I started an electronic conversation with Maynard Hershon, an old friend and talented writer. I am going to continue that conversation here, picking up where we left off:

This is a continuation of an electronic dialog between Maynard Hershon and me.

Earle: In our last installment, we talked a lot about classy riding and riders and how much has been lost from the days of our youth. What we left out was the personalities involved. At one time or another, Maynard and I have both written pieces for Grant Peterson’s Rivenell Reader.

In the late 1980’s, I was finishing a degree in magazine journalism and was looking for writing outlets. I had met Grant, knew he had the Reader, so called him and asked what I could do for him. He suggested that I interview Jobst Brandt.

I jumped at the chance. Jobst was widely known as highly opinionated, and less known for being right far more often than wrong, even when he contradicted conventional wisdom. I had met him a couple of times, and the world of high-end bicycles being as small as it was then, he readily agreed to have me meet him for lunch and then spend the afternoon with him in Palo Alto.

We spent the time in a wide-ranging conversation about his annual ride in the Alps, his friendships with titans of the Italian bicycle business and more. When we talked about mindfulness on the road, he showed me the buckets of tools he had picked up on various rides. We talked about ice riding, his relationship to the Palo Alto Bicycle catalog and the Avocet brand, and much much more.

I really liked the three-page piece I wrote for Grant. It was a glimpse into the world of international cycling at the highest level.

Grant, however, was disappointed. We had not discussed five-speed freewheels versus six or even seven; never mentioned indexed shifting versus non and barely touched on bald tires versus tires with tread.

In short, we had talked about bicycling, not bicycles. To be continued ...

New from Maynard Hershon

I asked Maynard to write some original content for the Earle Wheels Website, and he readily agreed. He wrote a nice piece, much in the vein of columns he has been writing for decades. Any of his regular outlets would have run it without changing a word.

But I am picky, and wanted to coax more out of him. We exchanged a series of emails back and forth, with me suggesting changes and him making some of them. He got closer to what I had in mind, but wasn't there yet. He wrote me saying he had thought of a different approach, and was going to start fresh. I responded with this: How would you feel about a dialog? You write 100 words or so, I respond to it in 100 words or so, and through the exchanges, build the article I want to write, but cannot write alone.

"That's a super idea,"  he responded.

The first installment of that conversation is now spread across five pages of www.earlewheels.com. Please read it and comment.

Self-regulation or County Regulations - We have a choice

http://host.madison.com/news/local/iowa-county-mulls-bicycle-event-ordinance/article_055a5aa7-cc25-52f6-9e3f-eaf3a0377975.html

Iowa County Wisconsin has some of the finest road cycling anywhere, and the cyclists should be smart enough to regulate themselves. But they aren’t. So they face this kind of heat.

Let me explain why: A lot of racer wannabe’s, even some licensed racers, treat large group rides in Wisconsin as closed-road road races, taking over the roads.  I’ve written about it before, as have a lot of other people. The cyclists take up the whole lane, run red lights and stop signs, sometimes even cross the center line into the other lane, even across a double yellow. Certain tough organized rides have become de facto races, with riders looking for a fast time, riding against their friends or their time last year, or some other ideal. And when you get clusters of them together, they forget that they are on open, public roads and need to follow the rules of the road.

Several events every year draw hundreds of bicycles to Iowa County, and the ride organizers don’t always work with local authorities to keep things civil. That leaves the local citizenry angry at the cyclists and angry at the local authorities for not reigning in the cyclists.

The solution should not be a county ordinance restricting rides and making it more expensive to run large events. It should not be incumbent on the local authorities to keep things legal on the road. The organizers of the rides should take care of enforcement themselves.

Here’s my modest proposal: For the big rides, the Horribly Hilly Hundreds, the Dairyland Dare and the Wright Stuff Century, get some more volunteers, or even paid workers. Maybe work with a motorcycle club to exchange support for one of their events. However it is done, get a lot of eyes on the road – at controlled intersections, curvy downhills and other spots where cyclists abuse their right to be on the road. When a cyclist runs a red light, blatantly crosses a center line or rides 3 or more across the road, take their number, call ahead to the next check point, and when the offending rider pulls in, take his/her number, wrist band and/or timing chip.

“Sorry, you violated the rules of the ride that you agreed to, you are off the ride.” Any official record of the ride should list the rider as “Did not finish, violated road rules.”

For smaller rides, agree ahead of time that there is a responsible ride captain. The ride captain and a second keep an eye on the group, and should a rider get out of line, send that rider home.

We as cyclists HAVE to be good citizens on the road. It does not take much for a motorist to have a “tragic accident” and kill a cyclist or two or ten, and probably get away with a slap on the wrist. We owe it to ourselves to obey the rules of the road, especially when there is a huge mob that can get away it, this time. That’s because some county is going to decide this time is the last time and make it really tough to have a ride with even three people in it.

Bicycle: Art Meets Form and High Point Cycling Classic

Over a six-day weekend, I drove 26 hours to and from High Point, North Carolina, for an event that combined a gallery show of bicycle art, a huge gathering of outstanding classic bicycles and the National Criterium Championship. It was worth all of the time and expense and then some.

I was reminded after decades on not seeing him that Bill Humphreys is one of the really nice guys in bike racing. He is the antithesis of the guys he talked about who had big egos that would make them inaccessible to those of us who were new to the sport and would never make it as racers.

Bill had been friendly and helpful years ago, and when I stumbled road weary into the bar at the High Point Plaza Thursday night, he introduced himself and ended up sitting and talking instead of retiring to his room with his take-out dinner.

Bill's book, The Jersey Project, illustrates much of the last fifty years of bicycle racing with hundreds of images of bicycle jerseys. Here is a link: http://thejerseyproject.com/index.php

I also cannot overstate the generosity of the locals, not only Chip Duckett and Dale Brown, but everybody I had contact with.

I was struck at breakfast one morning as a tablemate was trying to calculate the tip. “Twenty five percent of this breakfast is still too little.”  The waitresses were invariably cheerful, put up with random tablehopping and poured gallons of coffee as we sat and talked away the mornings.

The staff at the gallery and the showplace not only granted every request, but also went beyond, looking for things that could make the whole experience easier and more fun.

Tangling with a turkey

I had a turkey knock me off my bike last night riding through the UW Arboretum.

The immediate cause was a young wild turkey in the road, but I was prepared to handle that. I ride a lot in the Arb, and know about the flocks of wild turkeys. I have seen as many as a dozen at a time, and have never before gotten mixed up with them.

No, the turkey who took me down was one of those guys who buys an expensive bike, thinks he knows how to ride and gets himself and other people in trouble.

About a mile before, the wheeled turkey was overtaking a couple who were riding slowly side-by-side. I was coming up faster than everybody, but slowed down to see what was going to happen. Turkey, without looking back, sudden swung wide of the couple, crossed the double yellow into the oncoming lane and went around the couple without saying a word. I passed them and said, "good evening," and they continued on their way, riding in a straight, predictable line. There was plenty of room for all of us in the road.

Turkey, again without looking back, swung wildly back into the lane, which I kind of figured he would do, so I had hung back. I watched him for a few yards, and he was weaving back and forth across the road, not holding a line, but also not getting too close to the lane marker. When he weaved toward the curb, I accelerated past him, leaving about a foot and a half between us, but not saying anything. He looked over as I past and said "Jesus Christ." OK, I should have said, "On your left," but I figured that would have been his cue to swerve left, so I just went to the far left edge of the lane and got around him as quickly as I could. This was on an easy rise, but he fell quickly behind.

Down the treed hill just before the houses, I noticed the rain had washed a lot of sand into the road, so I did not go full speed. As I went up the first rise in the housing section, it looked like Turkey was riding fast and trying to catch me. OK, the road gets safer when it flattens out and straightens out, and maybe I should explain myself, I thought. Once I talk to him, I can soft pedal on the flats and let him ride away.

I did not get that chance, though. In the road ahead of me, there were three young wild turkeys spread across the road. All of them were facing my left, and seemed to be moving that way, so I went to the right edge of the road and slowed down. The wild turkeys ambled left, and it looked like we were all going to avoid mixing.

But here comes Two-wheel Turkey!

Coming up way too fast, he must be sure he is going to catch me and pass me. He splits the flock, with one turkey cut off from the others by his huge buzzing interloper (what the turkey sees when he sees "bike"), and that panicked bird bolts, taking my front wheel out from under me.

[Insert your favorite expletives here, with a couple of exclamation points.]

Turkey turned around and came back, asking if I was OK, as I bled from elbow and knee.

"I'll be OK." I actually tried to tell him about his passing dangerously earlier, but he was so sure he was right, I just shut up. I found his intellect to be about equal to a smart, 9-month-old dog. Eager to please but clueless.

"Do you want me to ride with you a little ways to see if you are OK?"

"No, I am fine." But if you keep talking at me without acknowledging what a mess you created, I'm going to explode, I thought. He had the sense to go on about his way, and I rode back home through the Arb.

Inspection showed a broken helmet, so after I cleaned up the road rash, I went to the emergency room, where I spent almost four hours to find out that I had no brain damage and I had done a reasonable job cleaning up the road rash. Bike is a little scuffed up, and should get new brake lever hoods, but they can wait. Helmet did its job, so needs to be retired.

All told, a very minor accident. But it should not have happened. Anybody who has ever watch a flock of turkeys could have known, SHOULD have known that you don't split up the flock, or they scatter and panic. If Two-wheel Turkey had just slowed down for a minute and followed me past them, nobody would have gotten hurt. And Turkey might be known by some other name.

Madison Wheelbuilding Classes

Through the summer, I am offering smaller wheelbuilding classes at my workshop here in Madison. I would expect that ordering parts and doing the advance work for the class should take about three weeks, then schedule a weekend in Madison for hands-on wheelbuilding.

I will work with one to four students here in Madison, with a Park TS-2 truing stand available for each student. As you look at the classes page on the Earle Wheels Website, http://earlewheels.com/classes.html, the sessions will be Day One on Fridays, with classes available July 12 or 19, August 2, 16 or 30.

If you are a beginning wheelbuilder, you do not need to lace your wheels before you come to class. I will teach you the whole process from start to finish, and you will go home with a very good pair of wheels. More experienced builders should count on bringing two pair of wheels to work on.

Bring a bicycle, so that we can enjoy some of the good riding around Madison. With the three-day class schedule, count on a short ride Friday afternoon, a longer ride Saturday and a quick jaunt through the University of Wisconsin Arboretum on Sunday.

If the three-day schedule does not work for you, contact me to arrange a two-day class, with a longer Saturday session.

Here's the deal on tuition: If you want a one-on-one class, I'll charge $250. Single student in small-group class is $175. Buddy class, two students in a three or four person class, registering together is $300. Club class, three or four students registering together for a class by themselves is $425. The Madison workshop would get crowded with more than four students. I will be able to give each of you the attention you need to finish at least one pair of really nice wheels.

More Maynard if you want it

It turns out the Maynard Hershon has only left the national bicycle magazines. Here's a note from him:

I did not quit writing for bicycle magazines, but I do not contribute to a nationally available one these days. I'm still monthly in the Bicycle Paper, a Pac NW free bicycle paper out of Seattle. My stuff is included in the Bicycle Paper web site and then archived there. You can read years of my columns at that site. I'm regularly in the Rivendell Reader...if you can call the Reader regular.

Here is a link: http://www.bicyclepaper.com/

I need help to get to BAMF

The Bicycle: Art Meets Form (http://www.bicycle-artform.org/index.html) is shaping up to be the best show of the year. I really want to go, but launching Earle Wheels has drained the bike budget for the year. If I am going to make it to this event, I'm going to need some students for my wheelbuilding class http://earlewheels.com/classes.html.

I anticipate that the sessions for the class would be Friday morning, Saturday morning and much of Sunday, say 11 am to 6 pm with a break in the early afternoon. I will work with the students to make the schedule work for most people, and of course, I want to see the scheduled presentations, so we will work around those. Tuition for the class will be $199.

I need at least six students, and I need to hear "I'm interested, tell me more" in just a few days. I know it is short notice, but if you are in that area, or are already scheduled to go to BAMF, here's a chance to learn to build good bicycle wheels.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Sunday mornings I can usually go to the end of my block to the one of the main riding roads south of town and either catch or be caught by somebody to ride with. It is one of the things I love about my home.

This Sunday, however, I was exposed to the worst of cycling and it left me angry and disillusioned.

The organized Sunday ride of a big local club was going my direction at the same time I was, and it took me less than a single block to realize that not only was this a group I did not want to ride with, but that they were actually putting me in danger.

The road out of town has a marked bike lane wide enough for comfortable two-up riding, but the lead section of this group was wider than that and once the group hit the first stop light, they not only clogged the bike lane, but also the full width of the car lane. They did it again a block later at the next light. As I watched from the back of the group, I could easily understand the rage that motorists feel toward this gang on inconsiderate louts.

As we started down the hill, on a relatively straight road with a bike lane, I found myself afraid to pass even one person, because the riders at the back of this group were randomly braking without warning and a couple were weaving across the entire width of the bike lane. So now, I not feared being hit by an out-of-control angry motorist, but was also scared of getting hooked into traffic by somebody who did not know how to ride in a group.

My last post was about classy riding. Well, this was a text book on what NOT to do.

I changed my route enough to escape these people, but the actions of this unruly mob left me feeling a little more paranoid of motorists than before. I kept thinking that the big group would generate a serious case of road rage in someone who had just enough sense not to plow into a big group, but more than enough rage to flatten a solo rider on an empty stretch of road.

We all have to share the road. Let's show just a little consideration for all road users.

One word for a whole lot of attributes

Class.

There was a time when the best thing you could say about a rider was that he had class. "He's a classy rider." Maybe not the fastest guy in the bunch, but still somebody everybody looked up to.

His bike was always well-maintained, his water bottle full, two tubulars strapped under the saddle. His clothes were clean, too. Real bicycle clothes, not just a cotton T-shirt over a pair of bike shorts.

Once the ride started, his class showed through. He could hold a wheel, and if you were on his wheel, he did not do anything to put you in danger. You knew about the glass, the potholes and the cars up ahead. If he accelerated, it was smoothly so you could stay on his wheel. He would let you know when he was slowing down.

The story on the Earle Wheels Website comes from my friend Maynard Hershon. People who have been around cycling and/or motorcycles for a while know Maynard's writing. Classy.

Maynard wrote a lot about classy bike riding, and he embodies it on and off the bike. He wrote a lot about saying "Hi" to other cyclists. He wrote about sharing the road. And then he quit writing for bicycle mags.

Despite the grace of his writing and his popularity, most people ignored his message. And when his writing disappeared, so it seems did the last voice advocating class on a bike.

I wish my words could convey more about what it means to be a classy rider. And I hope when I am out on the road, I can still be a classy rider.

Le Cirque du Cyclisme, 2013

I brought my daughter, Eileen, with me to Leesburg, Va., May 18, 19 & 20, for a get-together of fans on classic hand-made bicycles, and Keeper-of-the-Flame (KOF) new bikes. Le Cirque du Cyclisme http://www.cirqueducyclisme.com/ is associated with the Classic Rendezvous Website and Google group, http://www.classicrendezvous.com/ which was started by Dale Brown of Cycles de Oro in Greensboro, NC in 1999.
Le Cirque started in 1998 in Greensboro, and was moved to Leesburg in 2008, and I have attended each of the Leesburg events.
The bicycles are amazing. The mix of classic and KOF bikes reinforced my opinion about steel bicycles: The best handmade steel bicycles ever made are being made in the United States right now. Steven  Bilenky, Chris Bishop, Brian Chapman, Johnny Coast and others had new steel bikes.
But I go to Cirque for the people. I have some old friends that I only vaguely keep in touch with during the year, and I catch up with them. I meet some new people. I get in some bike riding and for the weekend, just live biking.
For me, the highlight of the weekend was at dinner Friday night. I had told a story to a few people, and then 10 or 11 of us were in a room of our own at a Cajun restaurant in historic downtown Leesburg. Dale Brown told the same story, longer, with much more detail, and none of the people who had heard my version interrupted him. A number of people chimed in afterward to say how hearing the same story from two sources confirmed the truth of it.
Here the story as I know it with Dale's detail added:
In the 1960's, Peter Rich, owner of Velo Sport Bicycles in Berkeley and a huge figure in US road racing, started to import Masi bicycles from Italy. Peter ordered some and got them in, then put in an order for more, pre-paying so he could get what he wanted, including some custom orders.
Peter waited months for those bikes, and whenever he called Masi, he got excuses. Finally, a woman who had ordered a Masi from Peter came in his shop on a new Masi.
"Where did you get that bike," Peter asked.
"From Masi in Italy," the woman said.
Peter then booked the next available flight to Italy.
When he landed, he went straight to Masi's store, where there were some pro riders hanging around. Peter took his list of paid-for bikes, found one of his on display. The pros all bolted when Peter picked up a hammer from a work bench, grabbed the bike and started beating the top tube.
"This is my bike, and I will do whatever I want with it," Peter said.
Masi was aghast and probably frightened, but got the message. The remaining bikes from Peter's order were packed under Peter's direction and then shipped to California. It was the last shipment of Masi's that Peter ever ordered.

"A wolf in sheep's clothing"

I had not thought about my Litespeed in those terms until Gunnar commented on the picture I posted. I don't even have other pictures of it yet.

It really is a mean racing bike under the civilized exterior.

The frame is a 2007 Litespeed Siena, their entry level race frame. Except that it is not a Siena, not really. The tube set started out the same, and the front-end geometry was preserved from the Siena, but the Lightspeed Custom Shop remade the frame to suit me. The wheelbase is a shade longer than stock at a meter exactly. My favorite bikes have always been right around that long. If you look at the seat tube, seat pillar and saddle position, you may note that the saddle is centered on a no-offset Thompson post. That happens when you know where the saddle is going to be in relation to the bottom bracket and the handlebars before you draw the blueprint for the frame. Seat tube ended up with a 72-degree angle. Note also the stem: 2 cm of spacers below a 17-degree stem turned downward. So not only does this frame fit me perfectly now, I have no less than 2 cm in any direction to adjust the fit.

The fork was custom built by John Slawta to match the blueprint from the Litespeed shop. Steel is real. I had full-carbon fork on my previous Litespeed. It was a lot lighter than my new fork, but I am a really old-fashioned guy, and that fork scared me. I have not seen a spate of broken carbon forks, and a lot of people ride on them, but I feel more secure on the steel fork. Probably 10 miles an hour worth of more secure.

Drive train is Campagnolo Daytona/Centaur. It's stuff that is built for people who have always been Campagnolo fans, without the price of Chorus or Record. It works well because I keep it clean and correctly lubricated. Easton Stem and bars came on my previous Litespeed and I had no reason to change them. I guess you could say I'm a "go with what you got" kind of guy. Saddle was a trade for something, but I forget what. It looks right and feels right.

The wheels? Earle Wheels, of course. Campagnolo Record hubs, of course. MAVIC racing rims, of course. Open Pro hard anodized, 32-hole rear, 28 front. Yeah, I know what I say about hard-anodized, modern light race stuff. It's going to break. The spoke holes will start to develop cracks. I would not recommend it for other people's bikes. But they are light and cool, and when they break, I will rebuild them, probably with Velo Orange PBP's. Nice silver rims were hard to find five years ago. If I could have gotten MA2's I would have. I put MA2's on my daughter's bike, and those wheels are older than she is.

The fenders, from Velo Orange, have brazed on bits throughout and work like a charm to keep things dry when the roads are wet.

But that's just the sitting-here-looking-at-it details. The ride is what sets this bike apart. I wanted a fast, comfortable day rider, and I got all of that and more. The bike delivered each attribute I was looking for and then invented new ways to delight me. The low bottom bracket and oversized tubes at the front end, combined with a perfectly matched steel fork means that the handling is precise and predictable, even at speed.

The acceleration is just silly. On flat road, I can wind up the RPM and it doesn't twist around underneath me. Or I can just drop onto the 13-tooth cog, stand up and the bike jumps. Yet with all of this speed available, I can ride for six or seven hours and not feel like beaten up.

There are a few other tricks, but I will write about them later.

Clubman Earle Wheels first showing

I'm excited to have Curtis Odom Vintage Style Bicycle Parts as a partner with Earle Wheels.

As I have posted previously, Curtis Odom hubs are the best I have ever worked with, and I really like the look of the wheels I have built with them.

And now, anybody who wants a good look at them will have to wait until Cirque du Cyclisme, in Leesburg, VA, on Friday, May 17. http://cirqueducyclisme.com/

I will be showing the wheels and sampling other Wisconsin products at the Earle Wheels room in Leesburg.

Please stop by.

Advice from my mother

My mother always said that if you are buying something you want to keep for a while, buy the best you can.

Working with a Curtis Odom hub for the first time, I knew my mother would approve. I was blown away the attention to detail. I was expecting a beautifully finished, smooth rolling hub with an extraordinary design carved into the oversize flange. I got all of that. I also got the best-thought out hub/spoke interface that I have ever worked with. What had appeared to be a price expensive but still fair to both parties is now a bargain.

Let me tell you why: When I snapped the first spoke into place in the hub, it was like only one other hub I had worked with, a particular small period of time during the production of Campagnolo Record hubs. I had spoken with Curtis about a week before I got the hubs, and we agreed that it was harder to lace a wheel with these hubs but worth it for the life of the wheels built around the hubs.

To get the spokes to fit perfectly and settle in for the long haul, the hub flange has to be exactly right. The right shape and diameter of spoke hole, the right thickness of the hub flange, the right alloy for the forging and the right forging itself. Curtis nailed every detail.

A build with these hubs takes a little longer, because the spokes are a tight fit and the flange thickness matches the size of the spoke elbow. Once the spokes are tensioned and pressed into place, the head of the spoke is flush against the hub flange and the bend of the spoke is gently cradled in a trough of deformed alloy. The chances of fatigue failure of a spoke are close to zero. I hesitate to say never, but I cannot see any combination of load and road that would cause spokes to fail in these hubs. 

The only time I have worked with hubs close to this good was in the early 1980s, when Campagnolo Record hubs had tight spoke holes. The were slow and hard to get laced up, but the wheels built with them were special right from the start. Curtis remembered those hubs and incorporated everything we liked about those hubs and incorporated them into his hubs, then made them into decorative art besides. Take a look at the pictures in the posting just before this one. Pictures of the finished wheels will be posted after Cirque.

Introducing Clubman wheels

Between the wars and just after World War II, British cycling clubs established a tradition of social recreation. Groups organized for sporting and recreational rides of a less competitive nature than races. Later, in the United States, serious cyclists gathered their friends and riding partners into some pretty large touring clubs, some with thousands of members and multiple rides scheduled every weekend.

Riders in these clubs, especially the British clubs, would have a single do-it-all bike. By the 1930s, several brands of bicycles offered a “Clubman” model. Meant to be a working bike, the geometry would be more relaxed than a full-on racing bike, the clearances would be large enough for big tires and there would be the capacity to mount fenders and a rack. This would be the road bike “for the rest of us.”

One of the things that distinguished club riding was the variety of events, from loaded tours to time trials. The way to get one bicycle to do all of those things was to have different sets of wheels to match different conditions.

To celebrate that spirit and Earle Wheels new partnership with Curtis Odom, we are proud to introduce the Clubman series of wheels. Built on Curtis’s incomparable ultra-large flange Clubman hubs, the first of these wheels are presented with Velo Orange PBP rims and Wheelsmith 2.0-1.7-2.0 mm butted stainless steel spokes and Duristan nipples.

These highly decorative wheels are also built to be used for decades, then rebuilt at moderate expense. For those of us whose sponsors won’t buy $2,750 carbon wheels, these wheels are a sensible investment at $855 with Campagnolo or Shimano cassette body and 130 mm over-locknut dimension.